Milky Way Simply Caramel Cookies

So I’m getting in the habit of making the lazy man’s cookie … a chocolate chip cookie stuffed with a mini candy bar. I’ve done it with mini reeses (delicious) and mini snickers before. Milky way is always that candy bar that would be so much better if it didnt have nougat. Nougat is just gross. And I can only imagine baked nougat would both smell and taste gross. Lucky for you and me, the creators of Milky Way realized this too and made Milky Way Simply Caramel — nougat free milky way!

Ingredients:

  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 1/2 cups chocolate chips
  • 1 bag of mini milky way simply caramels frozen
  • Coarse sea salt

Step 1:

Mix the butter and sugars until creamy. Add in vanilla and eggs and mix until they are incorporated. Add in the dry ingredients, and finally the chocolate chips. This is the same base recipe as any of my salted chocolate chip cookies so if you want more details around step by step instructions just go to that recipe.

Step 2: Chop the milky ways in half. You can put a whole one in there, but sometimes its too much to be honest. You might also want to chop these in half before you freeze them if you lack proper knife skills like myself.

Step 3: Using the mini cookie scoop (or melon scooper) scoop out a ball of cookie dough. Flatten it in your hand and stick half the milky way in there. Take a little bit of cookie dough and place it on top. Roll it into a ball until the entire milky way is covered. If it sticks out, you’ll get goopy drippy caramel that might burn. 

New summer manicure color. I forgot what it’s called. It’s an Essie color, but not from the Summer 2012 collection. It’s hot pink and the cashier at Trader Joe’s told me he liked how my nails matched my shoe laces.

Step 4: Add a dash of coarse sea salt before you pop these bad boys in the oven.

Step 5: If you have some leftover milky way like I did you can do one of two things: eat it (yum) or chop it a little more finely and top these cookies pre-baked. I went with the latter.

Step 6: Bake at 375 degrees for 11-13 ish minutes. It really depends on your oven. I think these were more around 14 minutes. Just watch them closely so they don’t burn.

So there you have it. Salted caramel chocolate deliciousness. Stuffing salted chocolate chip cookies with any small frozen candy (nougat free) seems to always be a hit. I prefer these to the Rolo-stuffed cookies because they melt a little bit more, so it won’t be like getting a solid bite of candy bar when you eat these. Not like that would stop my coworkers anyway. I have no witty comments to end this post because I need to get cracking on that turducken post.